Tag Archives: Orange County

I now have a program on Long Beach Local Television called Dogs By Andrew. This is our first on the air dog show, however we have many shows to come. Most of the shows in the near future will be about the different breeds we met at the expo.

Andrew from OC Dog Training at the Pet Expo

I am fascinated by the many dog breeds and they all have unique traits that at one time had a particular purpose. While the dogs of the past may have been working dogs, today’s dogs tend to be bred more and more for house pets.
I am wishing you the very best in dogs and in life,
Andrew Ledford

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Leash Training a Pit Bull in North Orange County. Notice the leash grip. Even when relaxed maintain good form

I have a few picture of a pit bull I am training in the North Orange County area of California. This dog does present some challenges. The first is gaining the dogs trust. Getting this dog to trust me took a little effort. While she is not exactly happy to see me she does tolerate me and is responding to training. You will see in one of the photos she is taking a treat from me. Although you may also notice she’s displaying is a bit of avoidance while getting the treat.

This dog usually shows more avoidance in the house and around its owner than it does when I have her by myself and away from the house. If you have a difficult to train dog give me a call for a free phone evaluation.

Treat Training a timid Pit Bull in the OC It is worth noting my positioning. I am turned to the side one hand behind my back and head away from the dog. I am presenting a nonthreatening posture while maintaining safety

Wishing you the best in dogs and the best in life,
Andrew Ledford
So Cal Dog training
714-827-4058

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First in home training class demonstrating Sit, touching drills, and beginning the Fetch or retrieve.

Wolfhound Muzzle Touch

We are back with the wolfhound from Anaheim Hills in Orange County. This in home training class presented some unique challenges. I did modify some of my standard techniques, however I don’t show many of these modification in the video. I feel most people will benefit more by seeing how the drills are usually taught.

We’ll begin with the sit with food drill. I go over the sit for food drill quickly. If you need to see how I do the beginning sit drill you may need to reference some of my other videos. During the sit exercise I go over taking the food gently from the owner’s hand. Forceful grabbing of food can be a problem for many dogs and there are several ways to work through over exuberant grabbing. Since this dog was grabbing the food in a frantic and unfocused way I recommend only rewarding gentle and focused food taking.

Next in the video I go over touching exercises using food as a distraction and reward. The touching exercises are part of the foundation exercises I teach. Touching drills teach the dog to be calmer when interacting with people and they teach the dog to like being touched in ways the untrained dog may find objectionable. The touching exercises are also helpful for working through avoidance behavior. Often it’s necessary to work past avoidance before a dog will reliably come on command.

The two touching drills I cover towards the beginning of the video are the muzzle touch and the occipital ridge (top of the head) touch. I mention the shoulder touch at the end of the video.

After we work on the touch drills we go outside where we learn how touch exercise can be applied to practical everyday situations.

Wolfhound Fetch Orienting dog to retrieve / chew toy

Before I work on focusing the dog to its retrieve / chew toy I go over what kind of toy I would like this dog to have.

Some dogs really like to retrieve and some don’t. You’ll see my new big dog friend in not too thrilled about chasing and getting a toy some strange human is playing with. But, there is a little interest and that’s all we need. Follow the directions, even if your dog only shows a little interest in the toy and you will have a retriever in no time.

With my in home dog training videos I always try to have a little commentary by the owners. After the owner commentary I go over the shoulder touch. The shoulder touch can be a very useful exercise for out of control, hyper dogs as well as fearful or sensitive dogs.

This video and blog post took over 10 hours to complete so if you like it at all I would greatly appreciate a G+ if you have a Google account. If you don’t use Google I also like FaceBook likes and shares as well as twitter posts. Thanks for your support.

Wishing you the best in dogs and the best in life,
Andrew Ledford
So Cal Dog training
714-827-4058

I mainly serve Orange County, Long Beach, the San Gabriela Valley, Los Angeles Westside, South Bay, and the LA metro area. I do training throughout Southern California and have worked dogs as far north as San Francisco and East into Arizona. I am also open to teaching abroad. I have done some training in Taiwan.

P.S.

If you leave a comment and would like to change it or have it deleted just let me know and I will take care of it as soon as I can

Here is the second part of the first in-home class with a dog from the Anaheim Hills of Orange County.

Teaching The Off Command

The video starts with teaching my new tail wagging friend the “Off” command. In the beginning we will use a two second hold between the command and the dog getting a food reward. By teaching “Off”, the dog will learn to focus and not touch during the holding period. After the holding period is over the dog need to hear the “Take” command before it can take the food. For future training it’s important that we count out loud. I try to put each part of the exercise on a verbal cue. By doing this you’ll have better command control of the dog.

There is also a part in the video where I show and explain a very helpful form of touching that can be used to calm an active dog.

So you can hear what the owner thought of the drill I included a little of the owner’s commentary. In this part, one of the owners talks a bit about how they think the exercise will work compared to what they have been doing.

The last part of the video is where I go over how to use positioning and touch/petting to get a dog to quit jumping. While I go over using the touch/petting technique for this drill you can also use food as the reward. As a bonus tip I also included an important safety procedure that should always be done when implementing the step back positioning drill.

Are you wondering about the potty conversation that was started and interrupted at the beginning of the positioning part of the video? To answer the burning question what happened, yes the dog did potty in the designated spot. Yay!

If you learned anything at all or find this post and video at all helpful could you please give it a G+ if you have a Google account? It would also be nice if you could share it on FaceBook especially if you don’t do Google.

Wishing you the best in dogs and the best in life,

Andrew Ledford
So Cal Dog training
714-827-4058
I mainly serve Orange County, Long Beach, the San Gabriela Valley, Los Angeles Westside, South Bay, and the LA metro area

The video shows my initial meeting with this Wolfhound puppy and the beginning part of the first lesson. On this day we are training in the Anaheim Hills of Orange County. I start with a short evaluation. The video doesn’t show the whole behavioral evaluation but it will give you a glimpse of the initial assessment. You’ll notice this dog is quite passive, and active. Wolfhounds are usually not quite this active.

The next part of the video briefly shows the yard and environmental evaluation. In this part of the training I check the yard for safety hazards and other possible problems. I then talk to the owner about some common plants that could be a problem for the dog. When doing a yard check I’m also looking for a good potty area and checking the fence line.

In the next video we’ll begin some of the foundation training. The training process is part of a system, each component of the lesson has a purpose and is important. Even seemingly trivial points have a purpose. I believe all of my videos with the possible exception of the two Goldendoodles contain at least one important training technique or principle. The Goldendoodle video was just for fun. It was more an experimental video where I attached a camera to one of the dogs.

I’m wishing you the best in dogs and the best in life,
Andrew Ledford
So Cal Dog training
714-827-4058

Here is a short video showing me arriving for the big training day where we take a real cow bone from the dog. Many of my training sessions a rather long so I’ll split the videos up into several smaller bite size clips. This video just shows the greeting, and me calming the dog down. Most dogs are quite happy to see me when I show up for a training session. Active dogs such as this one sometimes get a little overexcited. You may notice I’m using the Off command/exercise and touching to calm the dog. I know a lot of you are waiting to see me take the real bone from the dog. The real bone video is coming, but, I thought it would be helpful to also see the greeting and interaction before the serious training session begins. The video was done in Irvine, which is in Orange County CA.

Wishing you the best in dogs and in life,
Andrew Ledford
Southern California Dog training
714-827-4058

Dog training Video 2 and my Boxer friend at Irvine park. The Irvine area of Orange County has some good dog training locations. We are still training with the ducks and geese as distractions.

This video is the second in a series of three and has some good dog obedience training advice, but I feel it’s a little less interesting than the other two videos. The advice in these videos will be most relevant to those who are involved in one of my training programs. This training session is part of a customized in home training program.

In this video you’ll get to see me do some double handling to get the dog to sit. Towards the end I will also point out when the owner makes a subtle movement that sets the dog up to perform the desired behavior.

Let me know if there is something that will make these videos more useful for you.

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Traditionally in dog training the long line has been called a lunge line. I think this is because people used lunge lines from horse training. It doesn’t matter which term you use I will use them interchangeably.

Safety is the most important considerations when using a long line. Make sure you know where the line is at all times and don’t get tangled in it. It’s very easy to fall if the line is behind you. Tripping in this scenario is quite likely if you are backing up. Such as when taking up line when the dog is coming to you.

Dog obedience training using the long line

For dog obedience training or teaching basic manners I will barrow some long line handling techniques from tracker dog training. When training with the long line I usually run the rope or line over my right hand. This is shown in the video. I refer to the right hand as the guide hand.

The dog in this video was very energetic and sometime playfully wild and crazy. Usually I will not give a command if don’t think the dog will respond. the first video doesn’t show this but the next one I post will show the dog did not respond the way I had thought it would on a few occasions. This video was from the first day I worked the dog on a long line. So it was very early in the long line training. In fact you will notice in the beginning she is afraid of the long line. The dog did much better after a few days of training.

Many of the dog’s most severe problems reappeared when I started the long line training. Some of these problems were wild running and jumping, very forceful play biting, and picking up objects from the ground and not dropping or giving them. As I mentioned the dog was doing quite well on the 6 foot training leash. The dog also did well off leash around the house.

Since I did this series of videos we have trained the same dog at central park in Huntington Beach on a weekend and she did very good. Even with the ducks, and a teenager running up to play with her.

Tying the Long Line, the king of knot you use can make a difference. If you’re not good at tying knots use a training line with a snap instead

In this video I am not using food reward. That is because I forgot her special treats. Those of you who know me might ask why I didn’t use the treats I usually have in my truck. Well this dog was on a special diet so I was using her special treats. When dog training we sometimes have limitations or requirements that determine what training techniques we use. I think it’s best to stay flexible in how you train. This dog was in for a Board and Train / in kennel training program so I had several weeks to work with her.

While I do the majority of my training in the Orange County and Long Beach area this video was taken just north of the Orange county line in the Rowland Heights and La Habra Heights area. As you can see I also serve the San Gabriel Valley. California has a lot of great places to adventure with dogs and some good place for training too.

In this video you will see some short clips of the dog displaying its typical problematic wild behavior. The snake in the video I believe is a garter snake. After training the recall from the snake this dog did much better on fallowing days, and not only from the snake but other interesting discoveries too. At one point in the video you can see me manipulating the line to keep it from getting tangled. I left that in mainly for the benefit of people I am working with. I wanted people who are training with me to see how important it is to be aware of where the line is at all times. The video is a little over 7 minutes long.

Dog Training

Dog Training

We are combining several of our websites.
The most prominent is the
101-dog-training-tips.com site. eventually all 101 dog training tips information will be on OC Dog Training dot Com
Your Dog Trainer Andrew Ledford
Over 30 years of experience
Serving Orange County
Long Beach
the Los Angeles area including South Bay and West Side
San Gabriel Valley